Speculative Ethnographic Documentary: A screening of Nightfall on Gaia

Speculative Ethnographic Documentary: A screening of Nightfall on Gaia

By Digital Ethnography Research Centre (DERC)

Date and time

Thu, 3 Mar 2016 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM AEDT

Location

RMIT University - Swanston Academic Building

445 Swanston St Building 80, Level , Room 001 Melbourne, VIC 3000 Australia

Description

In April 2043, Dr. Xue Noon finds herself stranded in the GAiA International Antarctic Station. As the polar night closes in she connects herself to the Ai-system to scavenge digital memories and archives. Nightfall on Gaia is a speculative ethnographic film that depicts the lives and visions of human communities living in the Antarctic Peninsula. Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Antarctica, the film is an experimental meditation on the future of the Antarctic as a new extreme frontier for human inhabitation, the complexities of a fragile planet at the verge of ecological collapse, and the vicissitudes of an uncertain geopolitical future for the region.

Juan Francisco Salazar is an anthropologist and media practitioner. He is an Associate Professor in communication and media studies at Western Sydney University where he is also fellow of the Institute for Culture and Society. His film Nightfall on Gaia (2015) is his second feature length documentary and has been exhibited at international festivals in Bristol, Denver, Toronto, Copenhagen, Bogotá, Santiago and Sydney.

Organised by

Digital Ethnography Research Centre (DERC)

The Digital Ethnography Research Centre DERC focuses on understanding a contemporary world where digital and mobile technologies are increasingly inextricable from the environments and relationships in which everyday life plays out. DERC excels in both academic scholarship and in our applied work with external partners from industry and other sectors.

DERC approaches this world and how we experience it, through innovative, reflexive and ethical ethnographic approaches, developed through anthropology, media and cultural studies, design, arts and documentary practice and games research.

Our research is incisive, interventional and internationally leading. Going beyond the call of pure academia we combine academic scholarship with applied practice to produce research, analysis and dissemination projects that are innovative, and based on ethnographic insights.

DERC partners and collaborates with a range of institutions in Australia and globally, including other universities, companies and other organisations. This includes collaborative research projects, conferences symposia and workshops, and international visits, fellowships and publications.

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